As is my obsession, I read enormous selections, and some whole treatments of who Jesus could possibly be culturally, theologically and historically. There were loads of interesting but mostly disappointingly partial treatments. Nothing gave me anything like the assurance I needed to take the step toward saying who Jesus is for me.
Tonight we're going to talk about the beloved community and the repeated command that they get to love one another, and how for some reason that gets misunderstood and misinterpreted. He is stressing this one command and in the Brown Retreat (A Retreat with John the Evangelist by Raymond Brown) he says that is the commandment that John stresses. He presupposes that people will have known the sermon of the mount, those biblical and ethical injunctions. But the thing he stresses because they're getting kicked out of the synagogue so they need to have a different sense of kinship, a
We began the evening by listening to Luke 3:21 - 4:13, hearing of Jesus' baptism, the temptations and his genealogy. According to Boch, this "… entire unit demonstrates one thing: Jesus is qualified to represent both humanity and the nation of Israel as her Messiah." Eldon led us in a discussion on these sections and also introduced us to some of Luke's methods in crafting the story. John the Baptist prepared the way by saying that only those with a repentant heart were able to receive the message. It wasn't merely for the religious/Pharisees or even just the Israelites: "God